[3] Buckley was born at Mallow, County Cork, Ireland and emigrated to Victoria in 1851 with his wife, Elizabeth Maroon, née Neville, and their child.

Buckley died at his home, Beaulieu (now St Catherine's School), 17 Heyington Place, Toorak, of heart failure at the age of 80, on 9 October 1905.

The westerly one (306-12 Bourke Street) was the Edwardian Baroque-style Buckley & Nunn Emporium, built in two stages in 1911 and 1912.

The eastern building, the Men's Store (298-304 Bourke Street), was designed by the same local architects Bates, Smart & McCutcheon.

[11] It was decorated with male bas-relief figures in jazz-age costume, glazed terracotta panels and spandrels faced with stainless-steel chevrons and colourful musical-note symbols.

The National Trust has described the lift cars and lobbies as "unequalled in Victoria as examples of the European 'Art Deco' geometric forms which dominated decorative art in the 1930s".

[12][13] Australians in states other than Victoria generally believe[citation needed] the idiom derives from the adventures of escaped colonial convict William Buckley.